Alberta Party Posts Letter to Editors of the Edmonton Journal & the Calgary Herald

The following letter was sent today to the editors of the Calgary Herald and the Edmonton Journal in follow up to an article about the Alberta Party printed in today's editions of both newspapers.

In Keith Geiren’s article on December 5th, he asked the question “What happened to the Alberta Party?”. We thought your readers might be interested in the answer.

In the last several months we have moved to approximately 2,500 members and 2,160 “likes” on Facebook. We have approximately 50 Constituency Associations created, and 9 Candidates nominated to run in the next Provincial election. We have a great core team of candidates, including: Danielle Klooster (Inisfail-Sylvain Lake), Michael Walters (Edmonton-Rutherford), Tim Osbourne (St. Albert), Sue Huff (Edmonton–Glenora), John Hudson (Edmonton – McClung) and our Party Leader Glenn Taylor (West Yellowhead).

We know that doing something right is more important than doing it fast. We understand that we could quickly grow the party with the disaffected underperforming members of other parties by sacrificing our principles. We simply will not compromise our beliefs for any MLA, no matter what the short term gain. That’s not how you build a party that reflects the values of Albertans.

Like most Albertans, the Alberta Party knows the value of good, honest, hard work. The work of building something right, that we can all be proud of. That’s why we worked so hard, and engaged so many Albertans, in developing our detailed and comprehensive policies on Energy and the Environment, Health Care, Municipalities, and Education. We are also working hard on many other areas of key importance to Albertans including work to improve early education and childcare opportunities for Alberta families. We could not be more proud to be working hard on issues that Albertan’s have told us is so important to them.

They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Other parties, including the governing party, have copied our organization, our communications and even our pub nights. Many of our policies are being copied as well, including our commitment to transparency in government, our call for a public judicial inquiry into health care, and our commitment to fixed election dates.

The problem with imitation is that it lacks the core ingredient of being genuine. The Alberta Party was founded on the principles of openness, transparency and democratic renewal. The Premier was elected to leadership of her party based on a platform that included many of the Alberta Party’s policies and principles. But keeping those promises and principles is much more difficult than making them in a party committed to their own survival. Dynasties are not change agents.

The Alberta Party is a movement founded on these very positive principles, and we have no such restraints to change. We are more of a movement than a political party and our members are enthusiastic and genuine agents of change.